Is your "right stuff"
quotient up to snuff?
Last December, the U.S.
Congress passed the Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act of 2004. That legislation
gave the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), among other duties, the go-ahead
to start shaping rules on medical requirements for a spaceship passenger --
termed a "space flight participant" - an individual (who is not crew)
carried within a launch vehicle or reentry vehicle.
The FAA's Associate Administrator
for Commercial Space Transportation (AST) has already issued draft guidelines
for those ready-and-wanting space tourists among us.
Under a new regulatory regime,
you as a paying passenger will be able to zoom into space sitting inside a commercial
space vehicle once you've been informed of and assume the significant risks
of the venture. Additional rules yet to come, FAA officials explain, will help
promote the emerging commercial human space flight industry, putting it on a
solid regulatory footing.
Make astronauts of us
all
There's good reason for
the Federal hubbub. Ticketed public space travel is getting more real by the
day.
Repeat flights last year
by SpaceShipOne flights to the edge of space demonstrated that fact. Space aviator
Burt Rutan, along with his Scaled Composites team in Mojave, California -- backed
by bucks courtesy of billionaire Paul Allen -- snagged the $10 million Ansari
X Prize. They won the purse as the first private outfit to launch a vehicle
that carried the equivalent weight of three persons on board from the Mojave
Spaceport to suborbital space and return safely twice within a two-week span.
That was quickly followed
by Sir Richard Branson, owner of Virgin Airlines, taking the wraps off Virgin
Galactic. He plans to fly patrons into suborbital space within the next two
or three years aboard a fleet of five passenger spaceships now under design
by Scaled Composites. In licensing SpaceShipOne's technology, Branson wants
to build the world's first private spaceship to go into commercial operating
service.
"Standing at the edge
of the Mojave Desert back in October, I've got to tell you, the stomping grounds
of Buck Rogers didn't seem all that far away anymore," admitted FAA Administrator
Marion Blakey last month during a Commercial Space Transportation Forecast Conference
in Washington, D.C.
"You know, the steps
we take today are pouring a foundation for an industry that very well could
make astronauts of us all," Blakey said.
Cruise to the edge of
space
Astronauts conjure images
of the paragon of good health, exercised to the max, posture perfect, and eyesight
that gives Superman a run for his money.
The picture will likely
be quite different for paying space travelers. One thing the FAA must wrestle
with is what sorts of medical requirements might be necessary.
"You must have a commonsense
approach," said Melchor Antunano, Director of the FAA's Civil Aerospace
Medical Institute in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
For suborbital flights,
Antunano said, one proposal is having a passenger fill out a medical questionnaire,
leaving it up to the spaceship operator to determine if that person is in a
go or no-go condition. Also, a paying customer may need to sign a consent form
that he or she accepts the risk of a cruise to the edge of space.
For an orbital trek, it
makes sense to go another step, perhaps having a space tourist undergo some
form of pre-flight testing, Antunano said.
Public transit into orbit
There are several factors
to take into account, depending on whether a passenger is taking a speedy "pop
top," up-and-down, suborbital voyage, versus climbing onboard space machinery
to roar off into orbit for an extended stay.
A suborbital flight subjects
a strapped-in passenger to acceleration and deceleration stresses, as well as
the potential for an explosive decompression in flight, Antunano said. Exposure
to cosmic rays and solar radiation is not of great concern on such a rapid rocket
flight. Similarly, the few minutes of microgravity a space trekker will experience
shouldn't be a worry.
But public transit into
orbit is another story.
Along with takeoff and reentry
forces, a person could be subjected to zapping cosmic rays and radiation exposure
due to the length of flight and flying higher. Then there's the medical effects
from prolonged microgravity that must be considered.
"Once again, you've
got to go back to a commonsense approach...taking into account the magnitude of
the different stresses, be it suborbital or orbital," Antunano said. Overall,
care in crafting rules for spaceship operator and traveler, and not stifling
the advancement of space tourism, is key. "We have to give this industry an
opportunity to grow...they need a chance."
Challenge at every curve
The FAA's Blakey has noted
that the importance of safety in the commercial human space flight industry
is critical. "We have a collective goal, and that is to ensure that this
fledgling industry has wings to fly...making sure that the designers and manufacturers
have the freedom to dream...the freedom to design and build and test," she
said.
Along with Burt Rutan's
Scaled Composites group and Richard Branson's Virgin
Galactic, XCOR,
Rocketplane,
SpaceX,
Armadillo
Aerospace and others are working to complete reusable launch vehicles in
the hopes of carrying passengers in the near future.
In addition, Blakey said,
new prizes have been announced that offer both private and public incentives
to continue these endeavors and make commercial human space flight "routine."
America's Space Prize, established
by entrepreneur Robert Bigelow to encourage private
orbital spaceflight, is at $50 million.
"That's quite a carrot,"
Blakey said. "But even a $50 million carrot at the end of a 62-mile string won't
get the job done. Let me be plain: Beyond the TV lights and glitz, we have an
important enterprise in front of us ... and it's a road that's got a challenge
at every curve," Blakey explained.
Off-the-planet traffic
Given all the rocketry and
entrepreneurial muscle, is there a public willing to plunk down hefty chunks
of their payroll to become payload?
"Independent market
research data, compiled over the last several years, has shown that commercial
space travel has the potential to be a billion-dollar industry in the next 20
years," says Eric Anderson, president and CEO of Space Adventures, Ltd.,
headquartered in Arlington, Virginia.
"With this burgeoning
industry, there are many first-time-ever opportunities for not only adventurers,
but investors alike," Anderson said at a gathering
of space travel advocates earlier this week in Scottsdale, Arizona.
While nobody is quite sure
just how big space tourism might become, there are those who point to how large
off-the-planet traffic has already become - that is, commercial air travel,
and just in the United States alone.
A recent FAA outlook reported
that last year 688.5 million people flew on U.S. commercial air carriers. By
2015, the number of passengers is expected
to top one billion.
Now, just add a little speed
and altitude - a readymade market?
Card-carrying M.D.
Whatever happens, in the
offing are standards for space tourism, including some sort of civilian medical
rules and regulations.
There is clear need to differentiate
between the medical regulations placed on astronauts or military personnel and
those placed on passengers aboard private spaceships.
That's the view of Peter
Diamandis, not only a card-carrying M.D. from Harvard Medical School, but also
the sparkplug behind the X Prize and the Zero-G Corporation, which is already
taking people up regularly for free-floating
thrill rides on a jet plane. "I hope in the long run it really will
look more like today's aviation business," he said.
Diamandis said that on an
American space shuttle or Russian Soyuz mission, health is critical because
of two reasons.
For one, if you are in a
critical crew position, your health problem could endanger the life of others.
Secondly, on an orbital mission, your health problem could cause the mission
director to have to make a difficult choice, Diamandis said, between your possible
death or ending a billion dollar mission early, presuming that returning to
Earth could save your life.
"In a suborbital mission
when you're in the back seat, neither of these situations is relevant,"
Diamandis pointed out. "The decision not to fly a passenger for medical
reasons should be left up to the operator. If the operator wants to take a chance
with a person with a heart condition who has always dreamed of flying into space,
then that should be a decision between the operator and passenger."
Good and bad implications
Geoffrey Crouch, Professor
of Marketing in the School of Business at La Trobe University in Melbourne,
Australia is keenly studying the emerging space tourism market. He senses that
medical regulations might have both and good and bad implications for future
space tourists.
"Medical requirements
could have a substantial impact on customer attitudes toward space tourism,"
Crouch observed. "On the one hand, medical testing and training has cost,
time and hardship implications. On the other hand, this may be seen by would-be
'citizen astronauts' as part of the total experience of becoming a space traveler."
Crouch said space tourism
marketers need an understanding of both of these negative and positive effects
on customer behavior.
"The issue of the full
disclosure of the medical and safety risks involved is also pertinent to the
question of the level of medical regulations and training," Crouch advised.
The issue for regulators: What is the best way to protect the interests of the
general public?
Age-and-fitness filter
"It seems to me
that there will be a difference between the requirements for suborbital missions
and for orbital tourist flights," said Derek Webber, the Washington, D.C.
Director for Spaceport Associates and a leading authority on space tourism.
For a short 15-minute suborbital
experience, the effects of the ride on a traveler should be mild, Webber said,
although it might depend on the acceleration regime for any given tourism vehicle.
"We do not generally expect to see stringent medical checks before getting
on a hairy roller coaster ride at a Six Flags theme park, for instance,"
he said.
But for the orbital experience,
Webber continued, the potential rigors of reentry and maybe even a recovery
at sea, a higher level of fitness may be required.
In the business of public
space travel forecasting, Webber said it is important to discount the potential
market by some proportion due to wanna-be space tourists that aren't fit enough
to make the journey. Also not many young folks tend to be rich enough
to be a potential space tourist.
"So a pragmatic look
at demand requires that some combined "age-and-fitness"
filter criterion be used to avoid overstating the market potential. However,
because the exact nature of medical requirements is still not known, we cannot
today be precisely sure how big the discount factor should be," Webber
said.
Webber said that, gradually,
we will come to an understanding that makes sense.
"We can be sure that
the space tourist will not be expected to meet the same levels of fitness demanded
of today's government astronauts," Webber said. "After all, the tourist is headed
off on vacation, whereas the astronaut is headed off to work to his orbiting
construction site."
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